Which will be the key drivers of growth for Yahoo! in the years to come?
I consider the user base the most critical driver of growth both inside the US as well as outside. The more people get online, the more the opportunities. We have to continuously work at making the Internet more relevant, more indispensible. It is then that tremendous opportunities for business actually arise.

What are the other focus areas for Yahoo?
We are looking at the business enterprise space very carefully. We aim to cater to businesses right from large corporates to the small and medium enterprises with our services, whether it's an information portal, content for corporates or Web casting. Generically, we have been playing the ASP role to some extent and while we don't want to get into being an ASP specifically, we are developing video-streaming platforms to offer to corporates. At a more realistic and immediate level we will be using the personalization platform for corporates as well.

What do you foresee for the developing markets where Yahoo! has been making investments?
It will be interesting to see how countries outside of the US and Europe adopt the Net. But more importantly, access has to be made available and the kind of infrastructure needed for an Internet-based economy is very different from that of a traditional economy and most of these countries actually have the opportunity to leap-frog technologies that the developed markets went through and transit directly to the wireless age. However, this is a capital intensive proposition and will need a cohesive IT policy on the part of governments.

Do you see private operators making the investments needed to transit to a wireless age?
That would prove to be terribly expensive for the end consumer since as I mentioned this is a capital intensive business and investments in wireless technology by private operators would mean that they pass the costs on to the consumer and this cannot be the case. The commitment has to come from governments which is why I say that countries that have a commitment to IT at the policy level, for a variety of reasons, are more likely to put the requisite infarstructure in place and at the end of the day this is crucial for a recovery of the investments currently being made in e-commerce.